Many companies are segregated into specialized groups, business units, or functional units each having trained agents and specialized operations centers functioning independently to manage incoming calls. Call routing staff within these specialized units carefully observe the number of calls coming into each call center, the time each agent remains on line with a caller, the completion rate for a service being provided, and other items important to profitability. Call routing staff determine how incoming traffic will be routed in the telephone network.
Most people who call such a segregated company are not familiar with that company's structure and organization. For instance, it is unlikely that the potential customer knows that sales are handled by one group having a first telephone number while service is handled by another group having a second telephone number, or that service might actually be handled by different groups having different telephone numbers depending upon, for example, the date of purchase or the product model purchased. Consumers often dial a number associated with one major department or business unit while actually being interested in speaking with a representative from a different department.
Decision making logic for routing telephone calls within a company can be modeled as a tree structure or other database structure. The number of services provided by many companies causes call routing decisions to be extremely complex. Incoming calls have numerous potential destination branches.
To help insure that each call is correctly routed, many companies utilize call prompting, which can be performed by call routing staff or within the telephone network, to prevent misdirected calls. Callers are asked if they are calling for sales, billing, repair, etc., with associated responses entered using the telephone keypad or voice commands detected by speech recognition.
Call prompting reduces the number of misdirected calls. However, the caller is often instructed by staff or the prompting system to hang up and dial another number associated with the division or service truly desired. The caller is often annoyed at having to place more than one call, or if the caller is unable to understand the prompting instructions well enough to dial the correct number the second time, such an instruction could cause a company to lose valuable good will and numerous business clients. Also, highly trained call processing agents should be prevented from spending time on a call that has been sent into their office but cannot actually be properly processed there and to which they can add no special value.
It should be noted that information affecting call routing may change on a regular basis. Such information may be generated as a result of (a) adding or deleting locations to which a call can be routed, (b) the addition or deletion of equipment in the telephone network, or (c) equipment problems or emergencies within the switching network, or at called locations. For example, during an emergency, incoming telecommunications traffic for various offices of a company might be rerouted by call processing agents. This is because changes to decision making routing databases caused by emergencies often do not provide enough time for multiple departments to coordinate.
Information affecting call processing can also come from an intended call recipient, as in the case when the subscriber takes a trip and wants to send calls to a colleague or alternate number; or, it can come from the caller, as in the case when it is determined that the caller wishes to be connected with a particular business division or service; or, that he wishes to send a fax or data. Such call processing information can also come from the telephone network, e.g., when a new network control point is added to the telephone network, or when an update is performed.